Available Technologies

Tuberculosis (TB) is a potentially fatal infectious disease caused by the bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), TB is one of the world’s deadliest diseases and responsible for upwards of 1.5 million deaths annually. TB is also a leading killer of HIV-infected patients. One of the critical challenges in fighting the disease is that Mtb can establish a dormant, non-replicating persistence state during chronic infection, which becomes tolerant to many anti-mycobacterial drugs. Furthermore, the standard of care today is a long antibiotic regimen, which makes controlling the TB epidemic challenging and has likely contributed to the evolution of drug-resistant Mtb strains, resulting in increasingly complicated drug-resistant TB cases.

Description of Technology

MSU researchers have created a series of compounds that targets the DosRST pathway, which is a two-component regulatory system involved in Mtb persistence. Inhibiting DosRST pathway and therefore limiting the reservoir of the non-replicating persistent Mtb can narrow the spectrum of TB disease and shorten the course of TB therapy.